


You've Seen My Dark Side (I Left It On The Table)

by Foxpaws10



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Body Dysmorphic Disorder, Body Dysphoria, Derek Hale - Freeform, Eating Disorder, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Melissa McCall - Freeform, More tags to follow as story progresses, Post-Nogitsune Stiles Stilinski, Post-Season/Series 3b, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Stiles Stilinski Gets Bitten, sheriff stilinski - Freeform, stiles stilinski - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:06:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26794108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxpaws10/pseuds/Foxpaws10
Summary: So I've had this sitting in my drafts for years and I'm hopeful that posting this first prologue will push me to finish the rest! I've never posted anything that I've written for the Teen Wolf fandom but I have hundreds of half-started ideas and lockdown has been coaxing me to flesh them out a bit, so hopefully I'll be sharing more over the next few months.Titel is from Stay Gold by PVRIS.Please read the tags, I don't want anybody being triggered.(Un-Beta'd)Hope you enjoy.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I've had this sitting in my drafts for years and I'm hopeful that posting this first prologue will push me to finish the rest! I've never posted anything that I've written for the Teen Wolf fandom but I have hundreds of half-started ideas and lockdown has been coaxing me to flesh them out a bit, so hopefully I'll be sharing more over the next few months.  
> Titel is from Stay Gold by PVRIS.  
> Please read the tags, I don't want anybody being triggered.  
> (Un-Beta'd)  
> Hope you enjoy.

It was weeks of flickering street lamps sprouting fireflies, shadows turning into smoke with glowing eyes, heavy breathing down his neck and the damp smell of rot. A knife carving tally marks into his soul every time he watched his father's hand twitch towards the holster at his hip, distrust dark and heavy in his eyes. Sitting by the ‘Leaving Beacon Hills’ sign with a boxy toyota and Sheriff department cruiser idling behind, though it was a toss up whether they were there to run him away or drag him back.

Food tasted like ash and damp gauze in the back of his mouth, until the only option was to reach down his throat and pull it all back out. The lines between Melissa’s eyes as she urged him to eat: your body’s going to start eating your muscle, Stiles - do you know what your heart is? But the deep pang of hunger was easier to focus on, to control, than the ache throughout his body. Maybe, as his ribs pressed like teeth through sallow skin, maybe they wouldn't take him. He was too weak for them, he had to be.

The eyes staring back at him were too dark: Beta Gold, a gruff voice had once called them. Now they were nothing but mud, the dark spirals of an ancient tree, his pupils a bug emitting a dull glow as it drowned in murky water.

Didn’t he have a mole there? Why were they greying, the gaps between them were different, did he not have a line running between his nostrils before, why was the skin around his eyes purpling, his hair frizzing, why couldn't he find the scar from his broken arm?

There was a scream ringing between his ears, a girl with dimples standing in his peripheral that he could never quite catch hold of - and did he really want to? There was a bandaged hand on her shoulder and blood in her mouth and on her clothes and on his hands and no matter how much he scrubbed he couldn't get it off.

There was a werewolf outside his window and a lock on his door and a light in every corner of his room chasing away the shadows. But a ten minute power cut thrust him behind the door in his head, the sound of fingers scrabbling along the wood, a voice coaxing to **let me in let me in let me in**. He opened his mouth to scream and fingers filled his mouth, reaching down deep into his stomach to latch onto something.

Two, three, four hours later claws sank into his neck, cobalt blue eyes boring into his gaze, the only source of light in a deep abyss. The hand was wrenched from his mouth and there was nothing left to give, so he curled into the pain and counted breaths until the sharp glow of light pierced the thin skin of his eyelids.

All that was left to feel was relief as feral red eyes clouded his vision, a mouth of teeth that flickered between metal and bone, and the rip as they sucked the pain up into his throat.

Rain soaked his skin as he watched shadows stretching across the treetops, a wispy blanket covering his heaving body from searching eyes. There was a heat spreading through his body, starting at his throat and travelling slowly down to his toes, chasing away the cold that had been ever present since his sacrificial icing.

He followed the tug of his abdomen across the moss and lichen and twigs and leaves. His legs were moving fast, his feet bloody as he tripped and slid and jumped and scrambled across unfamiliar ground. Somewhere along the way he lost his hoodie to a tree, his shirt to a river and his sweatpants to a gorge. His skin was slick with blood and water as he followed familiar dark hair and dimples.

The tree trunk was vast and charcoaled, burning along with the manor house far into the woods. The fire welcomed him with warm fingers stroking along his shins, a gentle hand clasping and pulling him up and into the centre of the pyre. “Rest now,” it whispered, lips pressing to his forehead as he curled over the heartwood, closing his eyes and listening to the roar of a bandaged figure going up in smoke by the grasping roots.


	2. You're Just The Wind Passing Through

**2 YEARS LATER**

* * *

Derek Hale couldn't claim to have planned to become a deputy for the Beacon Hills Sheriff Department. It had never been a career choice, and in life the force had been nothing but an inconvenience - what with blaming him for every murder or bad thing that happened in the town. Thankfully John Stilinski was a man of evidence over opinion and he had been cleared of all suspicion for several years when the position was mentioned in passing conversation. At the time it had been a welcome reprieve and seemed like the best course of action, afterall it meant he would have access to more resources in their search.

Stiles Stilinski had been missing for over two years, and the only evidence they had were some blood-stained and rain-soaked clothes devoid of scent or reason. They knew the direction he had run in, they knew he was injured, but by the time they had even noticed he was missing the rain had dampened all his scent trails and his blood had soaked into the earth.

Sheriff Stilinski had been a desperate man, organising Search & Rescue parties, commanding his deputies to phone around all local hospitals and stations before widening the search cross country. The Pack had searched throughout the preserve, the town, the business district and warehouses. He’d had flyers in every window, social media coverage and had contacted a menagerie of organisations which helped track missing children.

Unfortunately news of Stiles’ recent behaviour had become public knowledge, his depression and disappearances, as well as his Frontotemporal Dementia diagnosis which the Sheriff couldnt rebuke without exposing the supernatural or being sent to a facility. The search parties dwindled and the media coverage moved onto the next crime, believing Stiles had either taken his own life or become lost and died.

The Sheriff refused to believe his son was gone and continued his search, but with no new evidence and interest dying down he was left at a loose end. He had implored Derek for help, but by the time Derek had returned from the Police Academy John had stepped down from his position and Parrish had been elected the new Sheriff.

They hadn’t given up looking for the boy, and John’s home office was plastered wall to wall with notes and theories, but there was nothing left to do. They’d exhausted all avenues. The Pack had split, spreading across county lines in an attempt to run from their guilt, grief and the vicious in-fighting that had followed. Nobody had given up but life and the future were hard to avoid and they all knew Stiles would hate for them to put their lives aside for him.

* * *

The door to Parrish’s office swung open just as Derek was reaching for the handle, two mugs of coffee balanced precariously in one hand. Of all the people he was expecting to see, Deaton was pretty low on the list. The veterinarian offered him a nod and small smile as he ducked past and headed across the bullpen to exit the station.

Despite the man having been his mother's Emissary, and Scott’s bone-deep respect for his boss, Derek had never been a fan. An evening pouring over books at the Loft with Stiles had sparked a mutual distrust in the man's elusive answers and smug smiles, Stiles flailing his arms as he bemoaned Deaton’s cryptic story-telling.

“What did he want?” Derek asked, pushing down on the ache at the memory of Stiles and how much the boy had changed after the Nogitsune. If they found him - when - he hoped he had recovered from the trauma.

“Somebody reported a deer carcass on one of the running trails early this morning. I asked him to have a look over it, see if he thought it was anything we needed to worry about. He said it wasn't supernatural but he wanted to examine the remains.” Parrish explained, taking one of the coffees from Derek’s grasp as he straightened a pile of files on his desk. “It wouldn’t hurt if you had a quick look to be sure though.” he added as an afterthought, eyes flicking up to meet Derek’s.

“I’ll head out at the end of my shift. John in yet?”

“No he called in sick this morning.” Parrish said. In recent months ‘sick’ had become code for ‘drunk’, though none of the deputies acknowledged it. They were always sure to have somebody head over to check on him, though usually Melissa had already dropped by to feed him or shove him into the shower. Derek had found him passed out in Stiles' room on more than one occasion, and the image had been so disheartening he tried to avoid the house altogether.

* * *

Derek rapped his knuckles on the front desk of the vet clinic, nose itching at the strong scent of disinfectant. He could hear Deaton cleaning down an examine table, the occasional bark of a dog over the radio in the kennel area. The mountain ash counter was a wall of pressure along his side as his eyes trailed the few anatomy posters on the walls, and a flea & tick treatment advertisement that Stiles had always jerked his chin to with a smirk and a wink.

“Ah Derek, I’m glad you came.” Deaton’s voice sliced through the descending haze of a memory and Derek straightened, turning towards the vet as he opened the hatch to let Derek pass through the barrier and led him into one of the back rooms. “I’m certain the carcass isn’t the result of anything supernatural, but there is something interesting about it.” he began, heading over to a low freezer and pulling the lid open, releasing a fog of cool air. “I took a few samples to be sure, I’m just waiting on the bloodwork to return, but I believe this deer was killed by wolves.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t supernatural.”

“It isn’t. Wolves are no longer native to California, however over the past several years they’ve been known to travel here. Only ever in very small numbers, that we know of, but in recent years there's been documentation of breeding pairs entering the territory and forming small packs. I’ve not heard of many travelling this far south, in fact most have only passed through momentarily in the search for a mate. But the preserve has a vast abundance of prey, and could be a prime spot for a pack to settle. I believe most predators can sense that this territory has already been claimed, and it’s possible these animals are merely passing through and happened upon easy prey, but they could be testing the boundaries to see how strong the claim is.”

“And you’re sure it’s not just dogs?” Derek asked, racking his eyes across the carcass. “It seems strange to leave so much of a kill behind.”

“I won’t know for certain until I get the lab work back, but it’s likely they were spooked by early-morning runners, or left to check the boundaries of the territory and planned to return to finish the meal later. If it were dogs gone feral, they would have been spotted by now.”

“And should we be concerned?”

“Wolves aren’t known to attack humans, and in fact we’ve only had two documented cases of a wild wolf killing a human in North America. They may target small prey such as cats and dogs, but aren’t likely to approach the populated areas. Every couple of months I hear of coyotes or foxes killing someone's pet, but if there’s an increase then it’ll have to be looked into.” Deaton advised and Derek nodded in agreement, casting a final glance over the carcass with a sense of dread building in his stomach.

* * *

Over the next few weeks there were countless calls about the insistent howling in the woods. Understandably people were concerned, and the sheriffs department sent out warnings to the town not to let their pets out at night and avoid the preserve as much as possible. Parrish had gotten in touch with Fish & Wildlife and they'd had rangers searching the woods, but so far other than a few carcasses there were no sightings of the wolves.

Tony Harrison had been complaining for over a month about something killing his livestock and threatened to take a shotgun to the wolves if they didn't hurry and move them along. Derek had sent a message to the Pack, warning them if they were in the area to stay away from the woods as one of the deputies had encountered a trophy hunter marching out of the woods one afternoon, and the last thing they needed was a were’ being shot by a trigger happy hunter. Scott was the only Pack that regularly returned to Beacon Hills to visit his mother but he thought it safer to warn them all.

They’d been having an unusually good streak of luck over the last year and a half with no further supernaturals travelling into the territory. Deaton was mystified as he was certain the Nemeton would be calling to everything in California and had taken to checking on the trunk regularly. Derek asked to be notified of any changes, but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. They'd all dealt with enough loss already, perhaps this was the universe's way of apologising.

* * *

The sting of wolfsbane never got easier, irregardless of how many times Derek knelt on this ground and buried a fresh sprig of purple. A veritable meadow of violet stretched across the land where his family house had once stood, dark and foreboding. It had been a few years since the house had been dealt its second burn, but the forest was grateful for the ash. Derek hadn’t seen the grass so green since he was in his teen years.

John had told him it was a couple of teenagers on a dare, camping out in the Hale House overnight when the breeze below the cracked floorboards caught their fire and tossed it at the dry wood. Derek had swung between a raging bull and depressed boy, looking out across the charred ground as the last tangible memory of his family was burnt away from him.

He had spotted the plant sprouting from where the heart of the house had once been, a shock of colour in the grey dead ground. He’d begun planting one for every time he’d thought of his family, a last tribute and warning. _Here lay the Hales, don't dare tread on this hallowed ground_.

Some days his hands were red and bloody, skin splitting and painting the purple with drops of crimson. Days like today it was a sharp sting and then satisfaction as he patted the ground, a smile curling his lips as he thought of his mother's laugh.

Brushing the soil from his knees, he watched the wind comb between swaying stems, a howl echoing on the breeze. When the low call came again, creeping through the trees, he realised it wasn’t merely a memory. Tilting his head towards the noise, he listened to the eerie drawn-out noise, an ache forming behind his breastbone at the sadness behind the lonely sound. Without thinking, he tilted his head back, throat bared as he called to the lone wolf. There was a pause, and then a chorus of distant howls, voices quivering between high and low, fierce and melancholy, joining the first wolf, searching for a missing pack mate.

Smiling, Derek turned his back to the meadow. The call of the wild the only appropriate music to be played across his family's grave.


End file.
